You may have heard various arguments to justify the paucity of women in top science jobs. They were summed up nicely by Lawrence Summers, details of which can be found at the Lawrence Summers entry at the Geek Feminism Wiki. There were lots of people talking about it.

So apparently Business Insider thought that they would do the world a solid and highlight the fact that scientists can be attractive, sexy people, too. … Business Insider is trying to cast this list of sexy scientists as some sort of outreach list – people who are sexy, who make science sexy. The problem is, it’s alienating as fuck. Suddenly, there’s one more area of life to be judged by looks rather than anything else, and for many people, especially many women, science has been a refuge where brains are what matter (or at least what matter first). Unlike many areas of life, in science, what you can do matters more than how you look.

The Finkbeiner Test for determining any sexist bias in a newsitem about a female scientist, because ” You’ve seen these profiles, of course you have, because they’re everywhere. The hallmark of “A lady who…” profile is that it treats its subject’s sex as her most defining detail. She’s not just a great scientist, she’s a woman! And if she’s also a wife and a mother, those roles get emphasized too.” from Double X Science. Here’s more commentary on The Finkbeiner Testfrom National Geographic. And then The New York Times Failed Miserably in its obituary for rocket scientist Yvonne Brill.

Women and Science: A New Conversation from Nancy W Mendoza, who wrote an MSc dissertation in 2005 about the under-representation of women and science. “I worry though that parents and children are still not teaching daughters to believe in themselves and be confident in their interests and their intellect. Toy shops are still segregated, playground chatter still focuses on what’s okay for boys and what’s okay for girls.”

How Children Learn Scientific Thinking From Their Parents: ‘parents of girls tended to be more absolutist when talking about morals than were the parents of boys. In contrast, boys’ parents were more absolutist when talking about global warming than the parents of girls.’ — Research Digest

I agree, that would be interesting to know. I did a quick search on Google images for ‘girls studying science graph’ and this brings up some interesting stats, though not comparing the exact same things as the Explore graph. But this blog post is pretty telling: http://blog.jolieodell.com/2010/08/31/women-in-tech-stats/